Halloween and California Fires

Another crazy few weeks! I just got back from a LONG week in California sampling ash from all of the fires they had out there. I’ll get to that later though. Since my last update Halloween has been the big item. There were lots of carving parties, pumpkin picking, Halloween parties and Trick or Treating! We even had a party with some of Morhéa’s friends. Morhéa was Princess Fiona from Schrek. She was the human version of princess Fiona (not that the Ogre Princess is ugly or anything) and she was beautiful. She loved her dress and wore it almost every day for a week.

Kim’s Halloween party at our house was a success. We had about every princess in the Disney catalog here, 2 dragons (or 1 dragon and 1 dinosaur), a flower, a witch and many more wonderful beings. Kim had a clown come to the party. At first I thought it was going to be a disaster because all of the kids seemed pretty scared of her but surprisingly they all came around. She did a puppet show and interactive games, but the hit was face painting. It was very exciting. A few days later Morhéa, Jahayra and Morgan went trick or treating. I had to miss it as I was getting ready to leave for California the next morning but from what I heard the girls had a great time being girls!

We also had a party with our fiends the Howell’s. They are big baseball fans of the Evil Empire (The Boston Red Sox). I am a Yankee’s fan and when they were put out of their misery you had to cheer for the Rockies. Anyway, they had us over for a party and Morhéa and Ella partied all night (way past their bedtimes).

Morhéa has also been getting pretty good at her ballet and tap class. We even have her first dance recital on December 9^th. I don’t know all of the names of the moves but she does them all. She also has gymnastics with her girlfriends every week. Morhéa, Jahayra, Morgan, Brooke and Sierra have a blast together. I am impressed at how flexible and nimble they are already. They have rings and a single bar that Morhéa can pull herself up on and then put her legs between her arms and do a flip and land with a dismount that Mary Lou Retton would be proud of.

At school Morhéa has been learning REALLY fast. Did I mention before that she is fully potty trained? She is!!! Last week I heard her count from 1-10 in Spanish which really impressed me. She also says my name is Morhéa in Spanish and now Kim is teaching her some French. She is still shy with the French but as Mom was counting in the kitchen today Morhéa was whispering the words.

For the past week I have been in California sampling ash. I started with the Harris fire (near the Mexico border) and worked my way up the coast to Malibu and then over to Lake Arrowhead near Big Bear Lake. In all I sampled the Harris (east of San Diego), Witch (northeast of San Diego), Santiago (Orange County or near there), Ammo (on the Marine Corps Base of Camp Pendleton), Malibu (North of Los Angeles where a lot of wealthy people live) and Grass Valley (East of LA in the mountains, 6000 feet) fires. The daily grind of our days got old real quick. Ray from work and I went out there. Our typical day started around 6:30AM. We would get food and then head to the field or a meeting, we would work all day running around the hills collecting ash until the sun went down, drive the 1+ hour ride back to the hotel, take long showers that required lots of scrubbing to get all of the ash and charred material off (apparently I should have scrubbed a little harder because I got poison oak all over the place), took another hour for dinner and then back to the hotel where we would have 2 hours of e-mail to sort though, then an hour to plan our next days events. We usually went to bed between 1 and 2 AM and did it all over again for 7 days in a row. This time instead of my normal Tyvek, respirator, plastic steel toed boots, chemical resistant gloves and a hard hat I got to wear Nomex, a hard hat, leather gloves, leather boots with leather shoe laces and my usual safety glasses. If you have never worn Nomex before it is an aromatic nylon, the meta variant of the para-aramid Kevlar. That is a little much isn’t it. It is fire restardant clothing! We had our team working with the WRD, BRD, Landslide Hazards, USFS and the National Parks Services. I got to sample watersheds, arroyo toad habitats, endangered trout habitats and various other newt, frog and toad habitats. We did some geologic sampling as well as soil and environmental sampling. A very long week and I am very glad to be home!

A Park Service Ranger and I over looking Malibu!